


as you stand upon the edge

by fensandmarshes



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Character Study, Gen, haven't even played the game for months but daaamn the lore, i just really love taliyah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23242378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fensandmarshes/pseuds/fensandmarshes
Summary: Taliyah leaves the camp in the cold violet hours before dawn. The stone murmurs beneath her touch.Or: Taliyah struggles with the dichotomy of her heritage. She makes her own path.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	as you stand upon the edge

**Author's Note:**

> title from Awaken! the full lyric is "as you stand upon the edge\ woven by a single thread"  
> i wrote this in like half an hour but like .......... i love her.

Taliyah leaves the camp in the cold violet hours before dawn, tugging her robes closer about her shoulders as she steals over the sand. The wind picks disinterestedly at her long red sleeves, tossing them for a moment or two before allowing her to continue without remark. She thanks it, under her breath, for its kindness.

She settles a short distance from the camp. It’s not a permanent place, of course. Tomorrow, her family’s caravan will move on. Since she began weaving, she’s felt a strange disquiet every time they pack up and continue travelling, kicking sand over the ashes of their campfires and smoothing the camels’ tracks with fleeting hands; it’s as though the stone beneath the sand tugs at her feet, and makes turns her first few steps sluggish before she works up the energy to dismiss it. The earth, it seems, does not like travelling. For now, she’ll be subject to its whims, even if only for a few minutes.

Taliyah kneels, and the sand pours away from her knees, exposing firmer stone underneath. It’s not enough. The stone tugs at her very core, irresistible; she splays her hands over the earth, and then lays her cheek alongside her palms, feeling the coolness chill her to the bone. It’s comfortable. Here, she can rest. Here, she is firm, planted, solid; there is no sand, shifting under her feet and destabilising her stance. Only the solid, unmoving stone.

It takes more effort than it should to tug herself away from the stone - she rests on her knees, gathering herself, then rubs her hands together to warm them and begins to weave.

The stone protests. It always does. Its inclination is towards permanence, and her tapestries are anything but - when she practices like this, always in secret, anything she creates is wholly ephemeral. She sculpts a long-robed figure, using her hands and her spirit in equal measure. She dissolves it, tugs it apart into individual strands, and trails these from her fingers in a defiance of the order of things. Her hands work, now, quick and calloused, to shape it into cloth. Weaving the stone has left her palms too roughened to work with silk or cotton, and her parents bemoan the hardened tips of her fingers - they mourn for her weaving abilities as though they are a living thing.  _ Ha _ , she muses, and tosses the stone-silk over her shoulders like a mantle.  _ Little do they know. _

The stone murmurs beneath her touch. 

“I know,” Taliyah agrees, and feels the truth of the words in her bones. She’s woven from two types of fabric, and they do not take to each other, leaving her as imperfect cloth - part of her is desperate to travel, to see the world, to be new and whole and constantly shifting, while another part aches for stability and solidity and the strength of stone. The contrast is a fault in her weave. Sometimes, she begs the Great Weaver to know why she was created this way, but she has resigned herself to a lack of answers.

Taliyah takes the stone from about her neck and lets it dissolve back into the ground. The sun inches over the horizon, spilling light over the Shuriman dunes. Her shadow sprawls behind her as she turns to face it. It’s going to be a long day, and a longer journey.

She should head back.

Taliyah rises from her knees and stretches up to greet the sun, raising her arms above her head in equal measures respect and an attempt to shake the stiffness from her limbs. But when she turns in the direction of the camp, she pauses. Something isn’t finished.

The stone, insistent, tugs at her boots. 

She basks in the sunlight and the stillness for a moment; the desert is silent except for the whistling of wind over the sand, and though she itches to run, the part of her that longs for security is more comfortable than she’s ever been. These stolen moments, devoted to her affinity with the stone, keep her sane as they journey. Though her eyes and palms ache from the sting of the sand, and she feels a constant fatigue from the years of travel, stoneweaving bestows a calm on her that she can’t find anywhere else.

If only -

_ Oh. _

Suddenly, Taliyah understands what she’s left unfinished. 

She crouches, coaxing the stone from the earth, and this time it comes willingly. It  _ knows _ . As she weaves, the stone takes shape in her hands almost before she can will it to - no longer does she need to force it into a form it’s loath to fit. First she fashions a single bracelet, simple and solid, around her left hand. Emboldened by her newfound skill, she keeps weaving. A mantle forms in leaps and bounds, easier than anything she’s woven before; its final shape is somewhere between rock-shards and cloth. Just as she is. When she settles the sprawl of stone around her shoulders, its weight is anything but oppressive - she’s more than strong enough to carry it, and the cool press of sandstone against the cloth of her robes is more comforting than anything she’s ever felt.

Taliyah means to take her time, but her newfound adornments spring into being almost instantaneously - she gathers more stone about her wrists and then, daring, begins work on an ornament for her hair. It mimics the shape of a waratah, in shades of bronze and russet. Or maybe, she realises, the sunrise at her back. The stone does not have to be wrangled, this time - instead it feels like an extension of her own limbs, and a grin curls across her face as she considers the possibilities.

This, after all, is who she is - not wholly stone, and not entirely a nomadic weaver either. The sun rises, and the dunes shift; she watches as the wind surges through the sand, and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, she’s at peace.

Taliyah smiles and heads west, towards the camp. It’s time to be on her way.

**Author's Note:**

> taliyah's trans, change my mind. (i joke, but being torn between comfortable change & safety/stability is a v common trans experience, as is being torn between ur family/heritage and urself/ur magical stoneweaving powers, so like. rito can eat my trans queer fists ig)
> 
> comments and kudos are very much welcome :eyes: and i'm on tumblr and twitter as fensandmarshes!


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